What ways do you know to attract users?
Perhaps there are those here who have been with Lemmy since its inception. It’s interesting to hear your experience in promoting your community or instance.
English or not, I think the default Lemmy UI scares away casual users. They don’t want to try out several alternate web UIs for a community they’re not yet invested in. They want a friendly-looking, easy UI out of the box, or they’ll leave.
Unpopular opinion: Lemmy should prompt people if they want to receive replies to their posts in their mailbox at signup. When you’re not yet in the habit of coming here regularly, Lemmy is easily forgotten.
Lastly, I recently heard someone say that Lemmy consists mostly of critical posts about big tech, politicians and billionaires. I find that type of content interesting sometimes, but I can see how it can be offputting. Lemmy definitely has a less positive, less casual, less diverse vibe than some other places.
What’s wrong with Lemmy UI? It has one of the best UIs in the wild…
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I think that the standard look of web UI, for people accustomed to the look of modern social networks, may not be attractive.
There’s a bit of an conflict there, because said UI appeals to old.reddit users and I’m thinking there may be a few here
I hate it a bit, its so confusing and has way too many buttons everywhere, the search hidden away etc.
https://blog.erlend.sh/lemmy-frontend-alternatives-are-popping-off
I think lots of them are better for general use, while the official one is most often the best supported. I disagree that many frontends are so great
There are alternate web UIs?
Photon: https://github.com/Xyphyn/photon
Old reddit style: https://old.lemmy.world
Voyager: https://vger.appAlexandrite is my favorite. Can also self host it.
Out of curiosity, why would you do that when Lemmy.world already does?
If you want to use an account that’s not on lemmy.world, you can’t do that on Lemmy.world’s instance. The official alexandrite instance let’s you use any instance.
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I don’t understand how I’m supposed to use it ? the read me is cryptic to me
You go to the website, log in, and use it
Lastly, I recently heard someone say that Lemmy consists mostly of critical posts about big tech, politicians and billionaires.
This is wrong, Lemmy consists mostly of posts talking about Reddit /s
Easier said than done, and I’m not myself a good example of that, but:
Create and maintain communities where users can talk about popular topics. Specially OC. Mild word-of-mouth advertisement of those communities and the platform as a whole, be it in other social media platforms or even offline.
Make sure to discourage the participation of certain types of users, because they will chase away the others. I can go further on that if anyone wants, but I think that the most important ones in this context are users who target others based on race, ethnicity, native language, where you’re from, or government that you pay taxes to.
Language and homeland should never be conflated, unless you want to tell linguistic minorities to fuck off (don’t do this). It’s fine to create a community for a specific language, or for a specific region/country/etc., but not both at the same time.
Make sure that the interface is translated to the target language. And if it isn’t, consider contributing with it.
I share your views.
I don’t think I’ve seen open racism or discrimination here on Lemmy, yet. (Except for those people that have strong opinions on communism/China perhaps.) Have you or other people witnessed something like that here?
Since you wrote that in bold letters: Do you have some personal insight on linguistic minorities? Or was it more a general statement… (I mean I have my own perspective. But I’d like to hear how things are for other people in places where I don’t hear too much about.)
I don’t think I’ve seen open racism or discrimination here on Lemmy, yet. (Except for those people that have strong opinions on communism/China perhaps.) Have you or other people?
I’ve seen a few. Way less than in Reddit, it’s mostly low-key, and instance admins get rid of them fast. However I often see people here saying that we should allow them in, and I think that it’s a mistake, specially if trying to promote Lemmy among non-English speakers. Because a lot of them will be somehow the target of this sort of discrimination, and they won’t stay here if they feel hostility against them.
Since you wrote that in bold letters: Do you have some personal insight on linguistic minorities? Or was it more a general statement…
The problem with that conflation between country and language is that it alienates linguistic minorities badly.
I’m not a minority speaker myself, mind you. But I got close ties with Talian (a cluster of Venetian varieties) due to familiar background, and I’ve interacted offline with the folks from the examples below.
Sometimes it’s external prejudice; a Kaingang speaker “speaks injun” so she’s assumed to be primitive and dumb in comparison with Portuguese speakers.
Sometimes it’s internalised prejudice; like Talian speakers claiming that they speak “broken Italian mixed with broken Brazilian” instead of a variety from Veneto.
Sometimes it’s questioning allegiance to the country; like “fuck off back to your Nazi country” if you speak Hunsrik (a German variety).
Sometimes it’s erasure, like people claiming “minority speakers? Everyone speaks Portuguese here. I never saw one.” (Pragmatically saying “I’ll pretend that they don’t exist because I don’t think that they should exist on first place.”)
Often it’s also practical matters - like online services not allowing you to access the service in your native language, even when available (often there isn’t), because you’re assumed to speak something else based on your country. Or expecting you to consume content from somewhere else than your homeland, because of your language.
And, from online discussions plus reading, I conclude that it’s the exact same deal elsewhere. It is not just “shit Brazil does” or even “shit New World does”, it’s everywhere - from Galicians to Okinawans, Saami to Xhosa, Pennsylvania “Dutch” and Maori speakers. Often with that feeling that you shouldn’t open your mouth, that you belong to no place, that you coexist with people who hate you, that even if your language is part of your identity your identity is wrong anyway. It’s gut-wrenching how much linguistic minorities get the short end of the stick because they’re expected to speak the country language instead.
[Sorry for the long text.]
Back to Lemmy. Those people want to consume social media as much as everyone else. Specially in their native languages, as it gives them the sense of belonging to a community - “this was made for us, by one of us!”. Memes, shitposting, a thought-provoking text, a meaningful discussion. And yet traditional social media consistently neglects them, I think that the Fediverse should welcome them with open arms - not just because it’s convenient for them, but also for the ones already here.
However when “we” [the Fediverse] create instances that tie languages with countries, we’re effectively telling them “nope, you are not welcome here”, exactly like the traditional media does. “We” can and should do better.
Letting YouTube and reddit and Shitter and co do their thing while making sure all the great advice on how to avoid them is easily accesible on Lemmy…
We should create instances for countries. Like old reddit. That way the language won’t be an issue for newcomers. Unfortunately we lack the manpower. But I believe that with time it will pick up steam
We already have that. There are lots of feddit.de .it .nl .something. And We have communities for politics in Europe / Gemany / …
I see lots of fellow germans here. So no issue from my side…
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French speakers also have a quite active instance with jlai.lu (je l’ai lu) which translate to I have read it … Reddit …
Spanish communities seems to grow as well.
I also see lots and lots of french and spanish PeerTube videos!
Yeah, I’m talking more about smaller countries. We have plenty of Europeans and North Americans, but for example people from South America, I don’t see a lot, same goes for the East side
but for example people from South America
/me raises handThat said I think that it’s better to create instances for languages than countries. Three reasons:
- It’s language that dictates availability of a piece of content for the user.
- It encourages linguistic minorities to help us to grow the Fediverse. Reddit doesn’t give a fuck about them because they aren’t profitable merchandise=users for its customers=advertisers, but Lemmy isn’t bound to that.
- Some people would rather use their L2, L3 etc.
A good example of that is feddit.de - note how the instance targets German speakers, not people from Germany.
That’s actually a very good idea. Language communities! So people could find a lot of content and not be separated by country
I love the internet because of the globalization. I can talk to people all over the world. Even without your good arguments, I’d consider it a loss if we divided that into nations.
Are you from there? Or do you want to do missionary work for other parts of the world?
Because I would need some more information on the ‘target’ people. What kind of social media do they use currently in that country? Is Reddit even a thing there or do people there maybe don’t even need a good alternative to that? Maybe they like to spend their time on Twitter / Mastodon over there.
I know there are quite some Japanese people on Misskey. And I’ve seen lots of Spanish and French content on Peertube.
Ah yes. And you absolutely need admins/moderators who speak the language.
Setup a server and advertise it on here.
Be the change you want to see.
sopuli.xyz is largely Finnish. Sopuli means a lemming.
saying that there is all the good content of Reddit with the bad content filtered out
Would love to hear about more instances and communities! I think that’s a big part of it for other parts of the world, reddit has a lot of those as well.
I’d also love to see some automatic translations built into the Fediverse. Something similar to the Firefox local translation would work, or maybe a cached version on the server once it’s been requested by someone. There are a lot of cool creators on Mastodon and Pixelfed where I have to copy and paste to see what is being said.
